gdp today of the world, i mean, the highest rates today are no longer a nation but there in africa. i'm not saying africa has now made it. we see natural resources that are there. i did know all these things in these days, but it was a combination of the gut feeling and the human side, but also a sense, i got also very upset and angry because of the inequalities and, zaire, there was a group of plutocrats stealing the country to death, literally. and on the other hand, young people, there was a great university, but nobody was paid, no electricity and so-and-so. people were denied basic opportunities. i can't explain it why, but i

was bitten by the virus. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> up next, investigative journalist ronald kessler, author of "the first family detail" discusses what secret service agents have revealed about our presidents over the years and talks about the recent scandals involving the agency. he spoke at barnes & noble booksellers in washington, d.c. this is about 50 minutes. >> thank you very much. it's a pleasure to be here. as you can tell from the title of my book, i like to write about secret subjects, preferably very challenging subjects that have consequences for society. i might be prefers because if the subject is too easy i don't want to do it. and this sometimes gets me into

trouble. wanted to the book i revealed a kgb archivist had defected to the fbi. usually effective the cia by this person wanted to defect to the fbi. i knew he was safe. he was in the united states, and nevertheless i heard from inside the fbi that they open a leak investigation. they're going to send agents to my house to try to interview me. i went through my mind how i would rate them, offered them coffee, and i tried to develop sources. having done several books on the fbi and covered the fbi for the "washington post," "wall street journal," "boston herald," thought that i knew what fbi agents looked like, which, of course, is silly but nevertheless a few days later it was arraigned in my well in maryland. very few people rang the bell.

to open the door and are these two very intense looking young man with a narrow ties and white shirts. and i said where have you been? i've been expecting you. come on in. they looked at me little strangely, little scared made in to help out this pamphlet, the watchtower. you might have thought that i planned the individual who ran across the white house lawn to get into the white house to get publicity for my book. that's not true but on the other hand, in my book i did predict a lot of the scandals that we see now. based on the corner cutting and lacks of the secret service, it's not the agents who are actually brave and dedicated and will take it will for the president, it's rather the management that has created a culture that rewards agents are keeping their mouths shut and perpetrating the myth that the secret service is invincible.

and on the other hand, punishes agents who point out deficiencies, who point out problems, who even point out potential threats. on a major focus of the book is what agency behind the scenes, because they really get to know the real character of our leaders, and i can be pretty shocking. for example, hillary clinton is so nasty to agents who protect her that being assigned to detail is actually considered a form of punishment. it is the worst assignment in the secret service here and yet here's this woman who claims to be compassionate, care about little people, shoe be a champion of the middle-class and yet behind the scenes she treats those very same people with content. what does that tell you about her character and how we should choose our president? should we choose them on how well they smile on tv? what they promise, which often they renege on?

what we choose them on the same cry to that we use the rest of our lives which is a friend, choose an employee, anybody in our lives. we choose them based on their character. we would never associate with someone who treated people who help them with nastiness and with contempt. and we select them on track record. what had actually done? what have they accomplished, or what have they not accomplished? so that's why you learn a lot in this book about how we should be choosing our president. it is a totally apolitical book. the book says that president obama and michelle obama treat their agents with respect and consideration. they will invite them to dinner. on the other hand, agents have been dismayed to overhear michelle obama urged her husband to be more aggressive and attacking republicans and siding

with blacks in racial controversies. the book reveals that joe biden, first of all, likes to skinny dip which offends e-mail secret service agents. this occurs both at his home at the vice president's residence in washington and also his home in wilmington, delaware. more seriously, when he goes back to wilmington which it is sometimes a we, and that's another issue, he will order agents to keep the nuclear it with the nuclear football at least a mile behind in the motorcade. he kessy wants to have the image of a regular joe, he's a man of people so does not have a big motorcade. but meanwhile, is president obama were taken out, we be totally defenseless against a nuclear attack because they would not be time for the military with football to catch up with joe biden so he could unleash a retaliatory strike. on top of all that, it has cost

we the taxpayers $1 million for joe biden strips on air force two back and forth to wilmington. it's one thing to go back and forth a few times you to your home, and he has advice president's residence in washington that would pay for, including five navy stewards who take care of every deed including making pastries every night. and biden treats air force to like his personal taxi, sometimes you go back and forth twice in one day. sometimes people even go back just to play golf with obama and they go back to wilmington. and the cost has been $1 million since biden took office. at the same time biden claims to be the sheriff is going to reduce government cost. this is the hypocrisy that goes on that you see in the book, "the first family detail." in contrast, president reagan

was one of the nicest presidents. he would spend time snoozing with agents -- smooshing. he would once going to the cockpit and great the pilots and remember the kids means, where jimmy carter did only once in his whole four-year term. jimmy carter was another phony. he would pretend to be this populist little boy peanut peant farmer, and other people, and yet he told his agents he did want him to say hello to him on the way to the oval office. apparently it was too much bother to say hello back to another human being. he would pretend to carry his own light in front of the cameras but as soon as the cameras were gone he would get the luggage to aides to kerry, or the like it would actually be empty. sometimes had come into the oval office at ibm and tell the press office to tell the press that he was in there working hard for

the american people in the oval office at 5 a.m., but he would fall asleep on the sofa and secret service agents would see him doze off. so these are traits that aren't always obvious to the public. they are secret in many cases, that when we do know about them we need to pay attention. reagan one day was going into the elevator at the residence and then it came up to him and told him that donna rice affair with gary hart, ukraine for president, was about to be in the paper the next day. and reagan said well, boys will be boys. but anyone up in the elevator with his agent and i his getting out he said to the agent, but boys will not be president. after reagan was diagnosed with alzheimer's, he said to an agent, well, there must be some positive side to this. made i would meet a new friend every day.

that was great optimism of president reagan. the book reveals that the reason that john hinckley was able to shoot president reagan is that the reagan white house staff overruled the secret service to let spectators within 15 feet of reagan as he came out of the washington hilton, totally unscreened. in the secret service did not want that, but they caved, spineless let, to what the reagan white house wanted. so ironically, it was reagan's own staff that really caused the assassination attempt. this has never come up before. it is confirmed on the record both by the agent who was assigned to teach what they call the reagan attempt at a secret service training facility, and also by peter wallison who did a report for the treasury department when he was general

counsel, the secret service was then within treasury. the report never said that it was reagan's white house staff that was responsible for this. wollaston later became white house counsel under reagan and he confirmed on the record as well but that is exactly what happened. going back, lyndon johnson was totally out of control. of course, back then the press never reported any of this. he would sit on the toilet and defecate in front of agents is being greek. he would hold a press conference at his ranch in texas, and reporters, including being the reporters, when he went on air force one he had this region of stripping naked asses got on the airplane, even with his own daughters and his wife there in the airplane. one day when he was vice

president, johnson was late for an appointment with jfk. he was being driven by the secret service from the capitol to the white house at about 5 p.m. it was rush hour. and he was late and so he told the secret service agents who was driving to drive up on the sidewalk to get there faster to the agent of course refuse to the sidewalk with both editions. johnson hit the agent on it and said you're fired. this is the kind of thing that went on every day. one agent said if this guy were not president he would be in the middle hospital. it was true, yet we entrusted our country and the lives of our military who went to vietnam under his direction to this guy who was really a maniac. and so when you really kill back the onion here you find that we really have made a lot of poor judgments when it comes to electing our president and our vice president's.

the secret service overall does a good job. when they get a threat, they investigate and they put the threats into one of three categories. class three is considered the most serious with a person has the intent of carrying out an assassination, has the ability. in that case when the president visits that person's hometown, agents will visit him or her and warned him to stay away from the president, warning he will be watched until the president leaves, and he will be watched. on the other hand, a class one threat is someone who just looked up in a bar i wish i could tell the president, he's a drunk. it turns out after investigation there was no real intent and most likely that person will not be prosecuted because it is a federal crime to threaten the president.

when time president george h. w. bush was upgrading people at the gate of the white house, he liked to do that and schmooze. agents didn't like it. they wanted to scream them. but a few days later a story appeared in the "washington post," a few days after that agents noticed sort of a classic lone assassin individual, someone who fits the profile of a lone assassin, namely someone who isn't smiling when anyone else does not, or vice versa. everyone is smiling and he's frowning. everyone else is wearing summer clothes. he is wearing a winter overcoat they patted him down and sure enough he had a weapon, he had a pistol and most likely would have used it. one of the most bizarre stories in this book, "the first family

detail," as when again george h. w. bush was going to need oklahoma when he was campaigning for election or the secret service dessert advance work. to talk to local law enforcement to see the any threats. local law enforcement said, yeah, there's a psychic in town who's been incredibly reliable in the past and this actually let us to bodies of murder victims. she says she has had this vision that when push comes to town he will be assassinated by a sniper on an overpass. well, the agents for of course and there is to take it seriously. at the same time, they did and they went and interviewed this woman and they said you know anything more about this? she said yes, i know the limousine to the motorcade already in town. where? the air force base. can you show us? they went out there. she pointed to a hand and sure

enough that is where the limousine for your five and anchors. sheet point to the correct one to prevent she said when push comes on air force one the next morning he will be wearing a sport jacket and export sure. they thought i was nuts. he always wears a suit. they did tell headquarters about it, but the next morning they went to greet bush as he came out of air force one and sure enough he was wearing a jacket companies ports check into sports sure. a shiver went down their spines, and they decided to divert the motorcade to an alternate route which would not go under any overpass. and, of course, bush was saved. he was never told about at the time. he learned about it for the first time in this book, but that is one of the more bizarre stories that i reveal in this book, as well as just how agents do their job. for example, when the president goes out of town, he's going to

stay in a hotel. agents will not only make sure that nobody else is a guest on the floor with the president stays, but nobody else is against even on the floor above and the floor below. and they will check out this week with the president is going to stay. they will replace the tv with her on tv because the tv could be a surveillance device. they get rid of the telephone, of course. they will look for books. they've only found bugs in a few cases where they were left over in the hotel because some actor or other celebrity had been there and someone was trying to bug them. they will search through the carpet in the frames of pictures to look for explosive devices or detonating devices, and then they will also check out local hospitals, exit routes, safe houses such as a firehouse where they might go if there is an

attack. they have what they call expedient hood which they will put over the present an event of a chemical attack. so it is quite involved. however, in the book i go into a culture within management which really started in 2003 when the department of homeland security took over the secret service, corner cutting, laxness and an attitude of we make do with less. with a great secret service. we are so wonderful. you saw the arrogance win the secret service director issued a statement saying that when the white house intruder gonzalo's entered the white house, ran through most of the white house with a knife, he could've had weapons of mass destruction. he could've had explosives, that

the uniformed officers exercised tremendous restraint. can you imagine that? there's this guy who could upload the white house and she's praising the agents and officers for exercising restraint. that shows the arrogance of the secret service that they would think we were such fools that we would fall for this baloney, and think that the secret service had done a good job. at the same time the secret service lied about it. they said initially that gonzales will stop at the door. i was a lie. you actually penetrated the white house, overpowered a female agent. wide uniformed officers didn't unleash dogs on them initially, obviously they were simply not paying attention. why didn't they take him out with lethal force? by definition he was a threat to president. obama had just left but he could

return and, therefore, he should have been taken out. you simply cannot wait until he actually entered the white house with weapons, with wnd, with explosives to find out if the really is a threat. and so on top of that the female officer was overpowered, and it took an agent who was off duty to finally take him down. so another item in the book, which the "washington post" picked up on without credit to the book, in 2011 there were shots fired at the white house. a female uniformed officer reported that, but her supervisor overruled her, cuckoo. , said is probably from a construction site. she later said hsu is afraid to push the point because she was afraid she would be criticized by management. and this again goes to the

culture of secret service management. it's not the agents as i said, it's the management that really punishes agents for raising any questions whatsoever. and so you have this cover-up mentality. it's really a rotten culture that can only be changed by an outside director such as bob mueller was when he came in, as the new director of the fbi. these ahead of the criminal division. not that the fbi was in terrible shape like the secret service, but it needed to be more focused on prevention of plots before they happen and that's exactly what bob mueller did, and made it clear that any agent who had the attitude of i'm going to make an arrest, with dementia, that's the end of it, is going to be left to work cases in butte, montana. the idea is to focus on

individuals who may become assets he will lead the fbi to more plots, more sources. and that's why we've actually not had a successful foreign terrorist attack since 9/11. people don't tend to connect it with the fbi but that is exactly why, along with help from the cia that we have a successful attack. every few months you see arrests by the fbi of terrorists and that's the bottom line that they are doing their job. i want is, speaking of the fbi just briefly, my previous book on the fbi reveals how the fbi breaks into homes and offices to plant bugging devices without getting caught and shot as burglars. this is something that is employed on any major case whether it's terrorism, organized crime, political corruption, and with the agents do is two weeks before the

break-in they of course case the joint and they determine who goes in, goes out. who works there. on the night of the break-in the agents will watch it though for those individuals to make sure they don't go back into the premises. they could even be in a busy. and if they do, the agents will divert them. they were police officers stopped him, give them a ticket. they will even have a traffic accident. they may even open a firefighter in the xml and can go back to the area. they also will take a photo if any dog that might be on the premises and show that two of the today was on contract to the fbi, and the veteran will prescribe it just right amount of tranquilizer. because of course they don't want any barking dog. at the end of the break-in to give that dog another shot to wake him up. they will bring their own dust

into the break-in in case a district in the dust on the coffee table or dust to replace the dust with her own dust. let's say they want to put bugs -- by the way, they showed me. i got some incredible cooperation, bob mueller approved his cooperation personal. they showed me a real bug which is about the size of a postage stamp, although that figure. it will record for 20 hours or transmit, as you wish. so let's say they want to put a bug in an office building. they go to elevator school to learn how to control elevators and they will go in, take control of one of the elevators, get off the top of the roof of the elevator and then overnight, they will get out, put the bugs in this way, get back on the elevator and during the day they will come out wearing business suits and no one is a wiser. let's say they want to put a bug in the home in the middle of the night.

they will take a photo of the front of the house and then blow that up into a huge tarp the victory over the front of the house so that any bystander walking by on the street in the middle of the night looks at the house and thinks that's the house. but actually behind the tarp they can defeat the alarms and defeat the locks. they put the bugs in the they also have a phony bush that opens up like an umbrella and they walked slowly with the bush in front of them to the front of the house and then they will shield themselves with the bush as they defeat the locks in the alarms systems. a tremendous number of anecdotes, some of them funding in this book. the secrets of the fbi, and just one is when they were going to put bugs in a mafia hangout in philadelphia, the agents determined that there was a back door but they did want to go in the back of his they could be booby-trapped so they had to go

in the front door but the thunder overlooked and all mike barr. the patrons could see the agents trying to defeat the locks. so the agents borrowed a city bus and drove in front of the mafia hangout, which was supposedly an electronics store. they got up, put the hood of the bus up to look as if the bus had broken down. they got out. they defeated the locks. they patrons couldn't see because they were behind the bus to the bus went around the block as they're putting the bugs in the they came back, but they went by a bus stop under two patrons from the bar waiting for the bus, in the bus went whizzing by them and they were furious. they went running to the blessing since it stopped in front of a moth to hangout, these two guys ran in drunk and the first the agents didn't realize that they weren't within because the agents were from different offices, or they were

with this secret team which is called tactical operations, which is again the breaks in to the homes and offices and i was able to go out to see the headquarters of this operation. the agents start taking other weapons and the walkie-talkies in these two guys started ringing to get off, let me off, let me off. they were scared to the agent who was driving said stop bothering me, i'm having enough trouble driving this bus. atop me to try this in 20 minutes. in another aged that up and get his shotgun over his shoulder and then they really started ringing to get off, let me off. so finally the agent was driving understood what was going on let them out. they went running down the street and nobody ever heard from them again. when it comes to the secret service budget, which is only

$1.6 billion a year, and that includes not only protection of the president and vice president, almost 40 individuals altogether including white house staff, as well as visiting heads of state, national nominating convention, plus the secret service investigates counterfeiting and financial crimes, the budget is ridiculous but it's about the size, the amount of one stealth bomber, and the secret service sort of creeks along like a car without an oil change. and all around its crumbling. in fact they refuse to update their devices at the white house protecting intruders to more sophisticated technological devices that are available now. they have refused to update devices for detecting weapons of mass destruction. they have refused to put devices

and to detect gunshots, and we saw that when the secret service didn't realize until four days later the white house had been shot up in 2011. even the d.c. police have devices for detecting gunshots. they are not keeping up-to-date with the latest firearms. the fbi has more powerful weapons. they will not allow a time for agents to qualify for firearms requalification or physical fitness test, and the cover that up by asking agents to plot their own test scores. so there is dishonesty involved which would never be tolerated any longer for an agency. when members of congress go out to the secret service training center, which i've been to with my wife who contributes vivid descriptions in my book. she's a former "washington post" reporter issue with the book

undercover washington which is about spying in washington, and we saw the train, for example, to do a jig on what they do wanted 80 degrees around and they do, and they have scenarios where they detect explosives. when members of congress go out there and they're showing the same areas, they're presented as spontaneous and isn't it wonderful the agents get the job? act i can secretly when goes after the secret service rehearses the scenarios beforehand so everyone knows the answer. again, total dishonesty and nothing is worse than any law enforcement agency. they also have their statistics. they will take credit for some cases that local police have investigated and clothes and then they go out and take a copy of the report and they call that an investigation and included in their statistics.

it's just the most poorly managed organization you can imagine, and in my previous book, in the president's secret service, i went into a little bit of this but much more in the new book. and one of the more shocking examples of this corner cutting is that under pressure from white house staff or campaign staff, the secret service will let people into events without magnetometer or metal detector screening. it's like letting passengers into an airplane with a metal detecting screen. if you want to do it fired or possibly prosecuted, but secret service will cut corners in this way because anything doesn't start, they're still in line outside vendor because the secret service hasn't provided enough magnetometers and then they will cater to secret service has no business getting

-- caving. any of these events could result in an assassination the you can't fight terror is coming with a grenade and yet on a regular basis to secret service will engage in this real negligence, and this is something that still has not been picked up by the press. based on my previous book, i wrote in the "washington post" in an op-ed back in 2012, may 2012, so far the biggest scandal in history of the secret service involved agents hiring prostitutes in colombia which is by what a story i broke. but the media have largely ignored a much bigger scandal at the agency, and lax management culture that condones cutting corners directly endangering the life of the president. that was in 2012, and get it wasn't until the intrusion by gonzales and the fact that an armed individual who had not been screened was loud in the elevator with the president said

finally, finally president obama obviously demanded the resignation of the director, julia pierson. but the previous director, soloing, also should've been removed. should have been removed after the salahis, the party crashers into the white house state dinner even though they were not on the guest list as well as a third entry, another story i broke. why would uniform officers ignore the fact that they were not on the guest list, it goes back that did not come through a background check? one clue, and you can tell from what i'm talking about, but one clue is when dick cheney's daughter was under protection, she would try to get her agents to take her friends to restaurants, as if they were taxi drivers. they refuse, as they should their law enforcement officers. they are to protect individuals

under certain laws and that doesn't include taking her friends to restaurants. but she threw a fit and capture detail later removed over this. so what message does that send to the uniformed officers that the white house gave who are confronted with his glamorous couple? it says hey, if it turns out that they were supposed on the guest list and there was an air and in the white house staff complained, we could be in trouble with her own management because, at her own management would not back as as was the case with mary cheney. and by the way, anybody who thinks that this book is not a political, i point you to republicans such as mary cheney, who were skewered in this book as well as spiro agnew for having a number of affairs going at once, even though he claimed to be for family values. that was his whole shtick, as well as jenna bush who evaded

her agents all the time, gave them a hard time, we didn't go through red lights trying to evade her agents. just didn't understand what security was all about. thought it was a big game. and senator ted cruz. you'll have to find -- by the book to find out what i said about senator ted cruz. i think it's interesting. and so at that point president obama says he had confidence in the secret service. how could anybody say that confidence in the secret service? it's not just to come out publicly and criticize them. he can just be quiet, but at the same time look for replacement for mark sullivan. mark sullivan, turns out, ordered -- this is one of the more shocking revelations, ordered agents who were protecting president obama at the white house, including when he lifted off in marine one, to go to camp david one weekend,

especially looking out for snipers that might try to take him out as he is lifting off with his family, ordered his agents who are on what's called the power team, instead of protecting the white house, go to southern maryland to protect mark sullivan's own assistant who had been harassed by a neighbor. this neighbor had a public called the police. the police were handling it. the secret service has absolute no legal authority any more than the fbi to protect its own employ come and get mark sullivan ordered agents to keep his secret, told them to go and protect his own assistant over a matter of months. and then on top of that, and that was revealed by the "washington post." i had a story back in 2012. but the books being what they are i hadn't brought it out yet. what was not in the "washington post" and is in this book is about the agents on top of all

that retrieve confidential law enforcement records about this neighbor. again, not only a violation of law but a violation of criminal law to retrieve confidential law enforcement records on anyone english of the legal basis, which they did not have. so not only is this a shocking example of dereliction of duty by mark sullivan to protect the president, not only a violation of criminal law, but it shows the cultured and it shows the effect on the agents. agents that are there to protect the president, they will take a bullet for the president to they are real patrons, and yet they're being told by the director, it's not important to protect the president. i was just have my assistant protected as a favor. another example in the book, and this is not hit the press yet,

is that when the actor bradley cooper, i know you who bradley cooper is, but i did know who he was but i'm told he is an actor, went to the white house correspondents' dinner where obama spoke, a high ranking secret service official in new york ordered agents at the washington hilton to let bradley cooper and his suv into the secure area in front of the hotel where only secret service vehicles were allowed, and even they had to be screened for plosives why dogs, namely belgium dogs that cost $4500 each. they are trained to step out explosives and also to take down individuals such as one running across the white house lawn. and anybody could attach explosives to the underside of a car. augusta i'm not saying that bradley cooper is a terrorist, but anybody could've attached explosives to the underside of a

car, and that's what even secret service vehicles have to be screened for explosives. and yet this new potential in the secret service apparently has some favor to bradley cooper and his security people to impress them. perhaps he's looking for a job once he gets out, tells them to just ignore the most basic security procedure. you can imagine begin the dismay of the agents were there to protect the president and they're being told to ignore the most basic security precaution. so that again tells you the culture that has brought us to this point where we actually have an intruder running into the white house, and in the loud and an elevated carried those not been screened regardless if individual has a gun. by basic particle can never let anybody in the elevator with the president and less of someone who has been screened and is already known to the secret

service. so that is where we stand today. i do hope that president obama chooses a good outside individual to head the secret service. i think his failure to replace the director right after the salon piece, six years ago -- salahis, is a colossal failure of management judgment. i think also perhaps he is very impressed eyes on agents as i'm sure he should become and some he thinks, well, yeah, this represents the secret service. there's no problem. and yet it's his own life that has been at stake and still is at stake as well as the lives of his own family. so that is where things. i think obama is capable of selecting a good leader for the secret service as he did with james comey who is the new fbi

director. he's very admired by agents, doing a good job. it is possible to get someone from the outside who can shake it up, change the culture from is not beholden to interests within the agency. but i'm telling you it's going to be a monumental task because everywhere you look there's corner cutting, there's laxness. there's a culture of spinelessness, and it is sorely in need of reform. and i hope that individuals reading this book will consider it to be a roadmap of what needs to be done to reform the secret service. because it has dozens of other examples of this culture of corner cutting, as well as the real story on our leaders, and that's something we need to wake up to. we need to pay attention to character and track record and stop fooling around with, did

they make a gaffe in some debate? are the nice on tv? that's the way we've been choosing presidents, and over and over again we are disappointed. that is the most i think important message in this book. i'd like to take your questions. >> russian, you explained like there's a high level of frustration among like to secret service agents. this is like interested from everything. is there like any initiatives from any congressional committee or any other organization to go ahead and conduct such reforming for the agency, even though it's going to fit into the presence rule him on all of this? speaks yes, is there a level of

frustration, you can believe there is. i interviewed many current agents as well as former agents. i was also able, as i said, get cooperation on the secret service to visit the training center, and the command center. but their outrage to the agents are outraged at this culture, and yet they feel their jobs are at stake. when agents were ordered to protect the assistance of the director mark sullivan, they felt that they were probably violating the law, yet they felt if they blew the whistle, if they set up for what was right, they would be fired. that's a serious it is. it's a scandalous culture. the other part of the question was, will hearings and investigations be useful and going to this? you know, i remember back after the salahis did their thing,

crashing the gate then, there were hearings on the hill and they gave the director a hard time, nothing changed the absolute nothing changed. if you have any organization that is screwing up, let's say if microsoft or apple were losing a lot of money, what would you do? you would bring in a new ceo who would shake it. you wouldn't have hearings. you would have investigations. he wouldn't have reviews, and that's exactly what the secret service -- it's simple but you get the right manager in there. for example, when bob mueller was fbi director, as soon as he came in, he was having briefings by top fbi officials, and one of the officials was overcome intelligence started office getting a misleading fashion office getting a misleading fashion about problems within her the vision which involve a spy case in los angeles.

and he just removed her like that, and boy, that sent a message right away. you better be on you better be honest, you better be candid and you better do your job. that made huge difference in the fbi. that's what you need to do with the secret service, a good manager. apel say it should be -- it's so unfortunate we have to think like that. we have so many women who are so capable of running businesses. meg whitman comes to mind, and certainly within the government, as well as men. it just needs to be someone who knows what he or she is doing, and it's very, very simple. >> why do you think that the fbi is so much better funded than the secret service? >> the fbi rightfully has been pushing to get more funding, and destiny very good job of it was the secret service not only has not been pushing for more

funding, because they could get but if they went to obama instead your life is at risk, we are really screwing up, we better double the budget, which i think is what should happen, boy, you can be sure that money would be provided. my god, $1.6 billion, it's ridiculous for this agency. and congress would go along as well. but as part of this screwed up culture, they have the attitude of we make do with less. in my book i quote mark sullivan as he is saying that, we make do list what -- we make do with less. what are they thinking? this is the president of the united states we're talking about the if you have an assassination you know five democracy. people recoil when you read the word assassination because it's so unthinkable and sound so terrible, but it's a very, very possible. in fact, i quote i in the book,

and by with two-thirds of the book is on the record, one individual who was not on the record who says that it's a miracle that there is not already been an assassination because of all those. even with the best security the president is very vulnerable, and with the worst security, now, of course, i saw tears will realize they could overwhelm the white house -- isil terrorists. it's a terrible situation. another difficulty that agents face besides their screwed up management is that many presidents think they are immortal and pooh-pooh as i said, by the secret service. that goes back to jfk to jfk refused to let agents ride on the rear running board of his limousine to they wanted to have two agents on the rerun the board in houston if they have been to the agents would've jumped on him as soon as the

first shot was fired which was not fatal, and pushed into the floor and saved his life, no question whatsoever. and soberly with all the conspiracy theories and all the talk about whether the secret service screwed up, in the end i'm afraid it was the president himself who made it possible for him to lose his own life. abraham lincoln, the same thing. even though the civil war was going on, he refused to have any security. finally, just before his assassination he agreed to have one d.c. police officer with them. on the night of the assassination there was one d.c. police officer, parker, decided to go out and have a drink at the local tavern. so lincoln was totally unprotected, and, of course, he was shot and killed. so secret service has so many things, difficult is that they have to face. it's one of the most important agencies in the federal

government, and until now it has been very secret. people ask me how did you get them to talk to a lot of networking, free will. but i think that they understand the talent on this story. i have a track record of writing about the fbi, the cia, and other sensitive areas. and that i will tell it like it is. for example, with the fbi i say they been doing a wonderful job since 9/11, but on the other hand, one of my previous books exposed william sessions, the fbi director at the time were engaging in personal abuses, having fbi pay for his pants around his home but had no security purpose. taking personal trips on the fbi plane. quite a few other infactions, even letting his wife into fbi headquarters even though she didn't have a top secret clearance. she would be given a pass so she

getting to that that book led to his dismissal as fbi director. so if agents really, really are dedicated to the truth, they understand that i'm going to tell the truth as well. also i've been told i listen very well, that seems awfully simplistic and doesn't take a lot of skill. i did a book on palm beach. i called up my midlife crisis. i wanted to drink more champagne or more parties with my wife, and it is a secret society there in palm beach which i was able to penetrate. one of the people there said nobody here listens to anybody. you listen, and that is perhaps part of what i've been able to tell these stories in these books. >> on a lighter note you talked about the secret service working with a psychic, was at the george bush threat i think it

was? could you talk about that? >> i did talk about that just now. >> sorry. >> the fact the secret service fact the secret service listened to a psychic and it is one of the amazing stories in the book. i'm glad you pointed that out. any other questions? all right, thank you so much for coming and i appreciate your questions. [applause] >> booktv is on facebook. like us to get publishing news, scheduled updates, behind the scenes pictures and videos, author information and to talk directly with authors doing unlike programs. facebook.com/booktv. >> did anyone see the movie contagion? this is a virus that comes out of nowhere and we didn't know until 2002 that actu